JONAH 4
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2002 James Melough
4:1.
“But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.”
It is difficult to believe
that one who had had such an experience as he, could have dared to be angry
with God for saving the people of Nineveh, but it simply demonstrates the
wickedness of pride, for as noted already, he was angered at the possibility
of his being discredited as a prophet. It might have been expected that he
would have counted that a very small thing compared to the salvation of the
Ninevites, but the preservation of his own prophetic reputation was clearly
more important to him than anything else.
Does honesty not compel us to
admit that very often we are guilty of the same sin? Is it not the fear of
being considered foolish that frequently keeps us from telling others of their
need to be born again?
How different it was with
Christ, relative to Whom we are commanded, “Let this mind be in you, which was
also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the
form of a servant (bond slave), and was made in the likeness of men: and being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross,” Php 2:5-8.
4:2.
“And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my
saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish:
for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of
great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.”
Jonah seemed to be blind to
everything except his own wounded pride, being indifferent not only to the
fate of the Ninevites, but actually angry that they had saved themselves by
believing the message he had delivered, and turning to God in repentant,
contrite faith.
There seems to be no
explanation for his attitude other than the fact that God would have us see
Israel’s attitude mirrored in Jonah’s, for down through the centuries they
have manifested the same envious spirit towards the Gentiles. But why present
us with such a picture? The answer is simple. Israel is God’s mirror in
which every man may see his own reflection, for the same proud, envious spirit
as marked them lurks in the heart of all of us; and by seeing it so clearly in
Jonah and Israel we may the more easily see the same evil in ourselves, and
seek the grace to put it away.
Basically Jonah’s sin was
pride, and while the same evil in us may not manifest itself in jealousy at
the conversion of sinners, it is revealed in countless other ways. One
evangelist, for example, may be jealous of another who wins more converts than
he. A teacher may envy another who has been given the gift of teaching in
greater measure. An elder likewise may envy another whose gift of oversight
is greater than his own. There is no evil more subtle, insidious, and
invidious than pride.
However blind Jonah may have
been to his own hateful pride, he was not blind to the character of God, which
makes his own attitude the more inexplicable. He was well aware that God was
gracious, grace being the virtue which bestows blessing upon the undeserving;
and he was equally well aware that God was merciful, ever ready to withhold
deserved punishment. And it was the same with God’s being “slow to anger,”
Jonah himself having had first hand experience of that patience. “... and
repentest thee of the evil.” His own deliverance from the belly of the fish,
and the salvation of the Ninevites, were unquestionable evidence of God’s
readiness to respond to repentance by withholding judgment, and bestowing
blessing.
And so much was he controlled
by pride that he dared to impugn God’s character, trying to make His good
appear evil! The wonder is that God didn’t strike him dead on the spot, but
the rebellious prophet was not stricken just because God is all that Jonah had
had to confess Him to be: gracious, merciful, patient, kind, and more ready to
bless than to punish.
4:3.
“Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is
better for me to die than to live.”
It is almost impossible to
grasp the full extent of Jonah’s anger. He was obviously beside himself with
rage, his preservation revealing the extent of God’s patience in response to
such blatant defiance. But surely only blind eyes will fail to see in this
the foreshadowing of the greater grace, mercy, patience, and kindness with
which God responded to Israel’s murder of His Son, when He assured them
through His servant Peter that He was willing to pardon it as a sin of
ignorance if only they would repent and accept His mercy, “And now, brethren,
I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But those
things which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that
Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be
converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that the times of refreshing
shall come from the presence of the Lord,” Ac 3:17-19.
Israel’s destruction just
thirty-eight years later, in AD 70, sounds the warning, that great as it is,
God’s mercy has a limit, and woe betide the man or nation who tempts it beyond
that limit.
The enraged prophet had the
audacity to tell God what was best, declaring, “... it is better for me to die
than to live.” It was only because of His love, grace, and mercy, that God
didn’t take him at his word. But must we not confess that while we may not
have expressed it in words, we have often entertained the same evil thought,
that we knew better than God what was best?
4:4.
“Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry?”
What patient grace is revealed
in God’s simply asking the rebellious prophet if his anger was justified? How
often that same patient grace has also preserved us from His judgment!
4:5.
“So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and
there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what
would become of the city.”
His going to the east side of
the city is in perfect accord with his attitude, for in Scripture the east,
contrary to popular belief, is always associated with sin and departure from
God, there being not one good mention of it in all of God’s Word, as any
concordance will verify. Nor is it difficult to imagine what was in his
mind. There is every reason to believe that he was hoping against hope that
the judgment he had foretold would yet consume the Ninevites. And again, it
is a reflection of the attitude that marked apostate Israel’s attitude to the
Gentiles through all the weary centuries during which that very attitude has
deprived her of blessing. It is ominously significant that neither in the
past, nor in the present, has Israel ever preached the Gospel.
“... and there made him a
booth.” A booth is very different from a permanent dwelling, for it speaks of
transience. He, in his temporary shelter on the east side of the city, is a
fitting figure of Israel as she has been for the past twenty centuries. She
too has known only transience during those years, moving as a wanderer amongst
the nations, out of touch with God, and out of the land He wants her to enjoy,
her heart filled with anger as she hears the hated Gentiles preaching the
gospel she herself refused to preach, and still refuses to believe. Jonah’s
hoped for destruction of the Ninevites finds an echo in the Jewish heart
today, for her belief is that the Gentiles are accursed, and excluded from
heaven because of their refusal to submit to the ritual of Judaism.
His sitting under it “in the
shadow” is also instructive, for it adds another brush stroke to the portrait
of Israel as painted by the Divine Artist. Shadow results from impediment of
light, and that is exactly where the Jew sits today. His refusal to abandon
the pursuit of righteousness through law-keeping has deprived him of the
illumination of the Holy Spirit, so that he cannot see the clarity with which
his own Scriptures verify that Jesus Christ is the foretold Messiah.
4:6.
“And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it come up over Jonah, that it
might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was
exceeding glad of the gourd.”
God’s watchful care over
disobedient Israel continues to be portrayed in His provision of the gourd for
rebellious Jonah’s comfort. The exact nature of the gourd is unknown, and is
not essential to an understanding of the truth being symbolically set before
us: it appears to represent the care with which God has watched over scattered
Israel, preserving her for ultimate blessing even while she languishes amongst
the Gentiles, awaiting the day when she can return to her own land. (The
restoration of her autonomy in 1948, and the continuing return of many Jews
to Palestine, are just two of many signs indicating that her long night of
weeping is soon to give place to the joy that comes in the morning).
4:7.
“But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the
gourd that it withered.”
It doesn’t take much spiritual
insight to realize that this verse is the symbolic foreshadowing of the fact
that the Tribulation, “the time of Jacob’s trouble” is near.
“... when the morning rose the
next day.” The dawning of that new day points to the fact that a new day is
about to dawn for Israel; and as it was the dawning of a day of misery for
Jonah, so will that new day be also for Israel. The imminent rapture of the
Church will be followed by another “new day,” the day in which God will
officially resume His dealing with rebel Israel. That day will be Daniel’s
seventieth week, the seven year Tribulation era, the final half of which will
be the Great Tribulation. In that day the “worm” will smite the “gourd,” the
Gentile nations where scattered Israel has sheltered for the past two thousand
years, for Scripture makes it clear that the Great Tribulation will bring the
utter destruction of the whole great edifice of Gentile power and might. The
“gourd” will wither.
The worm, incidentally,
working unseen to bring about the destruction of the gourd, portrays the
unseen working of God by which He will destroy Gentile power in the
Tribulation.
4:8.
“And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement
east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and
wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live.”
The rising of the sun
continues to portray the beginning of a new day for Israel - and the nations,
for it is to be realized that it wasn’t Jonah alone who suffered under the
heat of a blazing sun and the violent east wind: all of Nineveh suffered.
“Vehement” means sultry, dry, burning, scorching; and as noted above, the east
is always associated with sin and departure from God, and therefore with
judgment. That quickly approaching day will spread misery across the whole
earth; nor should we fail to read the significance of the scorching heat, for
in the book of Revelation we read relative to the Great Tribulation, that
phenomenal heat will be one of the agents bringing unimaginable suffering upon
the world, “And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power
was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great
heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues; and
they repented not to giver him glory,” Re 16:8-9. (To blaspheme is to vilify,
speak impiously, defame, rail, revile, speak evil of).
Jonah’s misery under the
scorching sun, and the blasting torrid east wind, is a typological picture of
the misery that will afflict Israel and the nations in the Great Tribulation.
As he wished to die, so will men during that awful time when the long
restrained judgment of God is unleashed, and envelops the earth, “And in those
days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and
death shall flee from them,”Re 9:6.
4:9.
“And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he
said;, I do well to be angry, even unto death.”
It isn’t difficult to see in
Jonah’s angry, rebellious retort to God’s question, a foreshadowing of the
unrepentant anger that will lead men to defy God, and blaspheme as they writhe
under His just judgment in the Great Tribulation, see again the quotation from
Re 16:8-9, “And men ... blasphemed the name of God ... and they repented not
to give him glory.”
4:10.
“Then said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast
not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in
a night;”
4:11.
“And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six
score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left hand; and also much cattle.”
The ATT translation of verse
11 reads, “... a hundred and twenty thousand infants....”
These two verses reveal the
tender love of God for perishing men and women, and remind us of what is also
written, “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the
Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?.... For I
have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore
turn yourselves, and live ye,” Ezek 18:23,32. “As I live saith the Lord God,
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from
his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O
house of Israel,” Ezek 33:11; and again, “The Lord is not slack concerning
his promise ... but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance,” 2 Pe 3:9. The man who
surveys Calvary, and doubts God’s love for sinners, is incapable of rational
thought.
His viewing the Ninevites, and
all sinners, as infants, further discloses the tenderness of His love for
perishing men and women, and His readiness to pardon them and bestow His
priceless gift of eternal life, if they will but repent and trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ as Savior.
An obvious question presents
itself at this point, Why does this book close with Jonah - in spite of all he
has suffered for his disobedience - still not reconciled to God? The answer
is that in the salvation of the Ninevites, we are meant see the salvation of
the Gentiles during this age of grace, during which Israel remains stubbornly
unrepentant, her salvation awaiting her repentance which will not come until
the Tribulation, which will follow the rapture of the Gentile Church.
It is to be noted,
incidentally, that while Nineveh was a great city, it was only a small part of
the great Assyrian Empire which was unaffected by Jonah’s preaching, and which
did not therefore share in the blessing of the Ninevites. In this God would
have us understand that while there will be a great multitude of Gentiles
saved during this present age of grace, there will be also vastly greater
multitudes who will reject salvation, and who will therefore perish. It is
the Lord Himself Who has answered the question relative to the number of those
who will be saved, “Enter ye in at the strait (narrow) gate: for wide is the
gate,, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be
which go in thereat: because strait (narrow) is the gate, and narrow is the
way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it,” Mt 7:13-14.
It is the prayer of the writer
that the study of these notes might be used of God to encourage His people to
greater zeal in spreading the Gospel; and should they be read by an
unbeliever, to awaken him to a realization of his danger, leading him to make
himself one of the few who enter into life by trusting in the Lord Jesus
Christ as Savior.
THE END